Saturday, 9 February 2008

Knee surgery anniversary

Today is my knees surgery anniversary and I'm doing a lot better :D

I was born bowlegged (When a person stands with their feet and ankles together but the knees remain widely apart) and never had any problem with that other than taking pictures in skirts, but everything changed around 18 months ago when I started to have a lot of pain in my knees even in bed watching tv.

After talking with 4 different doctors and taking lots of x-rays and tests, the decision was made, I had to go under the knife. Here you can see one of the x-rays pre-operation:

Those x-rays and the other tests showed that I had Patellofemoral misalignment, which means in simple words that I was all misalign, the hips with the legs, the knee bones and my feet with everything else.

What if I didn't operate? I would have to endure a lot of pain everyday and have knees replacement before being 30 years old.

What if I had just part of the operation with arthroscopy? I would have to have the same operation in less than 10 years.

Ok, I'll do it, both legs at the same time :) So, one year ago (Feb 10th, 2007) 3 doctors operated me. I had done in both legs a proximal and rotational biplanar tibial osteotomy, a lateral release, and tendon realignment. The last 2 weren't a lot, but the first one is another story and you can see it in this x-ray post-operation:

They broke my bones where the red circles are, then broke my bones where the metal pieces are, and they even took some bone in the shape you see in red. After that I had to be in casts for 2 months without being able to stand or do pretty much anything by myself. Thank God I had the support of my family.

After those 2 months, I were around 3 months in physiotherapy to be able to walk again and here I am today, one year later I'm in a new country and with almost cero pain in my legs, I'm able to play with the snow and I'm going to do some ice skating! :D

I just want to finish this post giving thanks to God for everything, and to my family that I love so much for helping me in every way you can imagine every minute of this experience.

4 comments:

Ouch! I bet it wasn't easy going through that... But you probably made the right decision, and it's good that you're healthy now!

My hubby just had back surgery for an herniated disk last Nov. and we had to wait for 6 months for the surgery. It was hell... he was in pain all the time. However, everything went fine and despite the fact he's not supposed to shovel snow for the rest of the winter (I'm basically Wonderwoman! :D ), he's back on his feet! It's like nothing happened if not for a small scar on his back. Lucky us to be young!